“Remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside . . . we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required–not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

John F. Kennedy
Inaugural Address
January 20, 1961

If you missed it, last Wednesday, in Ballard, a mob of angry neighbors assembled in a church to express their vitriol at the City Council’s proposed jobs tax – or did they. I was there, and anger was more inchoate. The neighbors were angry at what they see as Councilmember Mike O’Brien’s intransigence on getting rid of homeless people (or criminals as they might call them) from Ballard. Their opposition to the tax was more about opposing wasting more money and time on solutions to camps in Ballard that don’t include some kind of enforcement. Some were breathless about the meeting, suggesting the death of Seattle Nice and marking it as when Seattle Process “went off the rails.” But Wednesday night is simply the fruition of something I’ve seen coming for a long time.

I have finally become inured to my role as Cassandra or Laocoon, the voice in town that warns about upcoming disaster if leaders in the city don’t change their ways. The central part of that narrative is the harbinger ignored. That’s frustrating, but then there’s the part where I get to say, “I told you so.” So, Seattle and Mike O’Brien, I told you so

Back in 2011 I was part of something called the Regulatory Reform Task Force. This was well before the economic recovery we’re in now took hold and took off. Back then the city was in dire need of jobs and investment. Then Mayor McGinn had advertised himself as a reformer and supporter of dense, walkable development. The Task Force assembled with the awareness that we could create both more jobs and economic activity and create sustainable and efficient growth if we pared back costly requirements created by permit review and for parking in dense neighborhoods.

One element of this reform was to allow the possibility of retail in low-rise zones. After changes the year before, in 2010, he low-rise zones or LR zones were ripe for more apartments and live work spaces, so the thought was allow retail in some of those zones as well. The idea was to make higher density LR zones a little bit more like mixed use commercial zones. The change would allow an entrepreneur to live, work, and possibly operate a storefront in the same space; efficient, affordable, and sustainable, right?

Angry neighbors across the city didn’t think so. Stoked by two senior City staff, neighbors across the city, especially on Capitol Hill and Ballard, areas rich with LR zoning threw a fit. This would be the end of the world, as we know it. Forget about the work and effort from a range of stakeholders and the consideration given the idea, the neighbors who lived down the road from LR zones couldn’t stand the idea of even the hint of encroachment on their single-family paradise.

Enter Councilmember Mike O’Brien. The Council was split evenly with four in support of the idea and four against. No problem, right? O’Brien is a champion of sustainability, a bike rider, and fan of density and efficiency through and through, right.

O’Brien folded.

People who live in vibrant, walkable urban centers like Capitol Hill are the people we need on board to guide the future development of the city. We clearly don’t have them on board today.

So a few angry neighbors – led by insiders at City Hall – were enough to kill a rather modest proposal. That neighborhood, was already walkable enough, thank you.

At the time (and I have been culling through years of posts and emails on the topic) I warned that this was the beginning of a broader movement. Usually neighbors in one neighborhood would band together to kill one project. What was different about the killing of the low-rise proposal was it glued together grievances from all across the city. And low-rise changes were just emblematic of change, and opposing them and stopping that change was a way of saying “No!” to changing the “character” of neighborhoods.

The hazard of caving here was, I knew then, that they’d come back for more. And they did. The neighbors demanded and got from O’Brien,

• Killing small-lot single-family development
• Killing microhousing
• Screwing up low-rise zones with what was, in effect, a downzone
• Proposing linkage taxes citywide to slow and stifle growth
• Pushing for the Grand Bargain that became the MHA shake down
• Proposing a plainly illegal requirement for design review for abutting lots (overturned in court)
• Pushing for first in time (overturned in court) and deposit requirements for rentals

When O’Brien pushed for what he knew was a plainly illegal change to design review requirements that would force full design review on projects as small as four or five units he said he was doing it for the neighbors.

O’Brien, who is trying to win favor among a northwest Seattle electorate made up largely of single-family homeowners unhappy with the changes that have come to their neighborhoods, has taken votes to restrict density near single-family zones before. In 2014, O’Brien defended legislation restricting single-family development on small historic lots on the grounds of “protecting neighborhood character,” telling me, “The most egregious examples of what’s being built—I wouldn’t want those in my neighborhood.”

So why would there be any surprise that after capitulating again, and again, and again on  a wide range of housing options, killing and slowing them on behalf of the angry mob that they would turn on him for supporting cars and tents as a housing solution. Oddly, I mostly agree with O’Brien on cars and tents and for much of the same reason that we battled for all those other types of housing: they are offering solutions for real people who need shelter and housing.

O’Brien may not be able to see how his statement about, “I wouldn’t want those in my neighborhood” can apply to townhouses and to tents. In fact, it wouldn’t take a big leap in simple logic to see that if you gave the neighbors what they wanted and stopped construction of a townhouse because it was “ugly” that they’d be pissed off, livid, maybe even enraged when you refused to sweep away tents and RVs parked down the street.

I warned about this. I was ignored. Now O’Brien’s career is in jeopardy and the city is seeing what I’ve been seeing for years: an angry, embittered, and hostile mob of single-family homeowners who expect the Council to do exactly what they want. Doesn’t anyone remember Roosevelt where people were shouted down? This has been going on for years. It should be no surprise that a City and a Council that deliberately and stubbornly ignore basic economics, math, and basic principles of good government should find themselves now being yelled at by angry socialists on the left and angry neighbors on the right.

Leadership often means saying, “No.” The Council is now on the verge of imposing a tax that will harm jobs and prosperity in the city for a few hundred units of housing years from now. They’ve fed, pandered, and humiliated themselves at the feet of these different interests for so long in the name of “equity” and “character” that the mobs have learned mob action pays off. Math and engagement with people who build housing and operate it is ignored. Yelling, shouting, cajoling, and threatening pay off.

For they sow the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind. He has no standing grain. The stalk will yield no head. If it does yield, strangers will swallow it up.
Hosea 8 :7